1. KENNINGS

2. What’s a kenning?
Circumlocation Periphrasis Sort of a riddle A way of referring to a thing without naming it—using an indirect, suggestive phrase instead.

3. For example, what does this mean?
whale-road sail-road

4. Or this?
bone-house

5. bane of wood sun of houses
Or these?
bane of wood sun of houses

6. slaughter-dew battle-sweat wound-sea
Or these?
slaughter-dew battle-sweat wound-sea

7. blood-worm icicle of blood wound-hoe onion of war
Or these?
blood-worm icicle of blood wound-hoe onion of war

8. bird-playground umbrella of nature
Or these?
bird-playground umbrella of nature

9. A note on structure (you’ll need this)
Kennings are generally made up of two nouns. Let’s take whale-road as an example. In Old Norse and Old English, the form of the words would express that one modified or belonged to the other. Modern English words can’t do that, so kennings are translated in a few different ways. We’ll call them: Possessive Prepositional Hyphenated Open compound

10. For whale-road: Possessive: whale’s road Prepositional: road of whale
Hyphenated: whale-road
Open compound: whaley* road
*not a word